Gavin Newsom doesn’t appreciate Ted Cruz calling him “illiterate”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest clash with Sen. Ted Cruz erupted this week after Newsom amplified a warning about “masked men” and “secret police” tactics — language that critics seized on as a Nazi-era comparison — and Cruz responded by branding the governor “historically illiterate” while plugging his podcast.

The back-and-forth started in the same political lane Newsom has been living in for months: positioning California as a frontline opponent of Trump-era immigration enforcement. In recent remarks tied to a growing controversy over federal agents wearing masks during operations, Newsom described a scene of “masked men” and “secret police” and said the imagery felt “familiar” in Germany — comments that were widely interpreted by opponents as likening U.S. immigration enforcement to authoritarian regimes.

The issue has been supercharged by a separate flashpoint involving Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino and a long coat that German media and U.S. commentators argued evoked a “Nazi aesthetic,” igniting a broader fight about the optics and militarization of immigration enforcement.

Cruz jumped in with a blunt insult. In a post promoting an episode of his “Verdict” podcast, the Texas Republican wrote that “Gavin Newsom is historically illiterate,” saying the show would “break down his attacks on law enforcement.”

Newsom fired back, casting Cruz’s insult as more than politics. In his response on X, Newsom said Cruz calling a dyslexic person “illiterate” was “a new low,” framing the exchange as a disability-related jab rather than a routine partisan hit. (Newsom has spoken publicly in the past about dyslexia.)

Cruz and other conservatives argued Newsom’s rhetoric is not just inflammatory but ignorant of U.S. history — specifically the federal government’s use of troops and the National Guard during the civil-rights era to enforce desegregation when state officials resisted. Eisenhower’s 1957 intervention at Little Rock, in which he federalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed federal troops to uphold court-ordered desegregation, is among the best-known examples.

That historical argument is a key part of the political counterattack: that federal force used to enforce civil rights is not equivalent to authoritarian “secret police,” and that invoking Nazi imagery collapses major differences in purpose, legality, and oversight. Newsom allies, meanwhile, point to masked enforcement operations and aggressive tactics as evidence that federal immigration policy has become increasingly militarized and less transparent — a framing that has gained traction in Democratic-led cities amid recent clashes and court fights over enforcement practices.

The dispute has also become a proxy fight over what kind of language is fair game in the Trump era. Republicans say comparing U.S. law enforcement to Nazis is reckless and invites danger. Democrats argue that “secret police” imagery is a warning about accountability and civil liberties, not a literal history lesson.

Either way, the exchange shows how quickly a broader policy fight — immigration enforcement, police authority, and protest policing — turns into a viral culture-war moment when two national figures treat the timeline like a debate stage.